There is an emerging phenomenon among Gen Z in which individuals increasingly internalize local or isolated events as personally representative of their own lived reality, subsequently positioning themselves as indirect victims of those events. This tendency creates a slippery slope of psychological identification, making them increasingly vulnerable to manipulative narratives and emotionally charged digital mobilizations.
A growing example of this trend in Bharat can be observed in the rise of the so-called “cockroach Janta party” phenomenon, where even an isolated comment by the Chief Justice of India is rapidly transformed into a performative social media revolution. Almost instantly, large sections of digitally active (though often insufficiently informed) Gen Z users begin projecting themselves into the movement as if the issue were existentially personal.
A representative manifestation of this pattern can also be seen when a young female user encounters a viral account of another woman being cheated on by her partner. Rather than interpreting the incident as an isolated case of interpersonal dysfunction, the observer immediately universalizes the grievance onto the entirety of her peer group, adopting sweeping cultural assertions such as “all men are bad” and vice versa. This rapid and uncritical overgeneralization is not merely a transient cognitive error; rather, it reflects a deeper systemic existential crisis unique to digital natives in the algorithmic age.
The Collective Neurosis of the Existential Vacuum
To understand this complex nature of modern humans, we must first understand the internal void that increasingly pressures individuals to associate themselves with larger events, movements, and grand narratives. Viktor Frankl posited that the human species is primarily driven by a “will to meaning” – a fundamental motivational force to discover a unique purpose in life that transcends the biological search for pleasure or the social drive for power. When this will to meaning is frustrated or obstructed, individuals experience what Frankl termed the “existential vacuum,” subjectively felt as a chronic state of emptiness, apathy, and boredom.
Frankel further wrote that “The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behaviour is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behaviour are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).”
This conformism has trapped the present generation within a hyperreality manufactured by markets and social media algorithms, where individuals aggressively seek to emulate the lifestyles of influencers and celebrities. In this process, they become increasingly susceptible to manipulation by various narrative-sellers on social media, who convince them for performative participation in trends and digital outrage, and the user or consumer believes they are doing some revolutionary work when they share videos or participated in hashtag trends.
Algorithmic radicalization and the Data Politics
Modern capitalism have engineered a digital matrix optimized to hijack the human emotional vulnerabilities. Yuval Novah Harari called it “Data Politics”– a regime where our daily social behaviours, anxieties, and micro-expressions are continuously converted into structured, monetizable data, rendering human life trackable, predictable, and ultimately manipulable. Further he dismantled our modern delusions of personal autonomy by declaring that “free will is not a scientific reality; it is a myth inherited from Christian theology.” The theologians created the myth to explain why God was justified in throwing sinners into hell; today, Silicon Valley uses it to explain why you willingly spend three hours scrolling through toxic relationship commentary when you should be sleeping. So now authority is rapidly shifting away from the human heart to Big Data algorithms.
Let understand it through an example A young man goes on a date, gets split-the-bill anxiety, and later pauses for exactly 1.8 seconds on a video of a woman saying, “If he doesn’t pay for the first date, he’s a broke boy.” The platform’s predictive engine doesn’t think, “Ah, a young person navigating dating etiquette.” But it detects the insecurity of young man and now within hour his entire feed is a non-stop loop of hyper-masculine influencers telling him that “modern women are financial parasites” and that he needs to buy their drop-shipping course to become an “alpha male.” If you ask this young man why he suddenly holds a deeply cynical, generalized view of women, he will confidently beat his chest and claim he “arrived at this conclusion through sovereign, critical thought.” This is the ultimate “free will mirage.” He did not make a choice; he was hacked through his pre-existing insecurities by an automated platform trying to sell him drop-shipping packages and meal-prep subscriptions.
This is the dark core of algorithmic radicalization. Instead of pulling users out of dangerous, isolated rabbit holes, algorithms validate and deepen their biases to keep them staring at the screen. We are witnessing what Harari calls “outsourcing self-awareness to AI.”
Tumhari hai tum hi Bachalo ye duniya…
This is a highly alarming moment in which we must seriously reinvest in parenting and community life to counter the growing politics of data manipulation and algorithmic influence. India possesses a strong familial and community-based social structure, which remains one of the last effective safeguards against large-scale psychological and narrative manipulation. Sadly, however, this system is gradually deteriorating. By all means, we must preserve and strengthen it before the social atomization of individuals becomes irreversible. At last, all I have to say that, “Nurture and educate your Kids and Generation otherwise someone will defiantly nurture and manipulate them.”
— Atul Mishra, Junior Research fellow at the University of Delhi.
